Der Wobbly by B. Traven
"Der Wobbly" by B. Traven is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows the itinerant worker Gerard Gale as he drifts into a multinational crew of down-and-out laborers picking cotton on a remote Mexican farm. Through heat, hunger, and exploitation, the story zeroes in on the economics of low-wage labor and the first sparks of worker solidarity that push the crew toward collective action. The opening of the novel
begins with a cotton-pickers’ song and a chance gathering at a desolate station, where Gale falls in with Antonio, Gonzalo, Sam Woe, and two Black Americans, Charley and Abraham, all bound for Mr. Shine’s plantation. After a grueling trek through bush and thirst, they reach the farm, sleep in a bare shack, and toil for meager piece-rates under swarms of insects and a chronic water shortage. Daily life is sketched in vivid detail—from cooking over campfires to Abraham’s small-time egg enterprise that both sustains and indebts the group—until the men calculate they cannot survive on the pay. They stage a brief, disciplined work stoppage; the boss relents, raises the rate (with back pay), and Gale, singled out as the lone white worker, receives a bit more. Soon after, an oil-camp manager needs a temporary driller, and Gale seizes the chance to leave the fields for steadier food, shelter, and work, closing the opening on a pivot from plantation labor to the oil frontier. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Traven, B., 1882-1969 |
|---|---|
| Title | Der Wobbly |
| Original Publication | Berlin: Buchmeister, 1926. |
| Note | Later editions have title: Die Baumwollpflücker |
| Note | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cotton-Pickers https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Baumwollpfl%C3%BCcker |
| Contents | Erstes Buch. Die Baumwollpflücker -- Zweites Buch. Der Wobbly. |
| Credits | Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library. |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 82.5 (6th grade). Easy to read. |
| Language | German |
| LoC Class | PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures |
| Subject | Americans -- Mexico -- Fiction |
| Subject | Migrant labor -- Fiction |
| Subject | Mexico -- History -- 1910-1946 -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76111 |
| Release Date | May 18, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 205 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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